Popular Parcel Under Siege Again

Riverside Pledges To Leave Field Alone

November 19, 1996|By AMY GARDNER Daily Press

NEWPORT NEWS — City planners have again recommended rezoning the 26-acre portion of Riverside Regional Medical Center's campus that includes the highly visible and well-used soccer field at J. Clyde Morris and Warwick boulevards.

Planners propose switching the Riverside property's zoning classification to office use, which would allow the hospital to expand its operation or build any number of facilities, from a medical office to a bank to an electrical substation to a water storage tank.

The staff recommendation comes three years after the City Council rejected Riverside's request that the property be rezoned from residential to commercial use. The latest idea is part of the city's draft zoning ordinance, which the Planning Commission will take up again at a public hearing Wednesday afternoon.

The proposal has revived the outcry that arose in 1993, when soccer players and others lobbied the City Council to preserve a pretty, useful corner of the city by leaving its zoning alone. They succeeded, but many now are wondering whether it all was worthwhile.

"Some people have thrown up their hands and said, `We just fought that three years ago, and now it's being handed to them,' " said Rose Prillaman, an opponent of the 1993 rezoning. "It's not even something they have to apply for. It's being handed to them."

Riverside did ask for the rezoning, said hospital spokesman Bud Ramey. Hospital officials made the request more than a year ago when city planners who were working on the draft ordinance approached the facility for guidance.

But the hospital's board has pledged, Ramey said, to leave the soccer field alone. The only immediate purpose for the request is to bring all of Riverside's campus into a single zoning classification, he said. One long-term purpose, he added, is to make it possible to build a new entrance to the hospital on Warwick Boulevard - well south of the field.

"We're committed, and we share the view of the community, that this parcel of land is precious and should not be significantly altered now or in the future," Ramey said. "We do not plan to build any buildings on the Warwick Boulevard parcel. We do not plan to expand parking on this property. We intend to leave the soccer field alone."

Ramey added that the pledge would be honored should Riverside enter into a partnership with a larger health conglomerate, as it considered doing with Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. earlier this year.

"Our board has promised that they will not relinquish local control of this organization, nor will they relinquish nonprofit status," Ramey said. "Any relationship that Riverside may take part in would be more of a joint venture than an equity or ownership change."

That's good news for soccer players, who already have too few fields to choose from, said Karl Greaves of the Peninsula United Soccer Club.

"We struggle, not just our club but soccer in general, we struggle to find fields to play on," said Greaves, whose organization uses the Riverside field nearly every day of the playing season. "That field is a major hub for soccer because we don't have other playing areas."

Riverside does not own the 70 or so acres it occupies between Jefferson Avenue and Warwick Boulevard south of J. Clyde Morris. It leases the land from the Mariners' Museum under a contract that extends to the year 2061. The 26 vacant acres in question were added to the lease in 1989.

Some rezoning opponents have contended the lease violates Archer M. Huntington's intent when he gave the land to the museum: to establish a public park. But the museum's executive director, John Hightower, said that probably wasn't Huntington's intent.

"The intent was essentially to establish the museum to preserve the culture of the sea," Hightower said. He added that he does not object to the hospital's rezoning request - and is glad for the lease with the hospital, which lessens the museum's property-maintenance duties.

Planners justified their recommendation to rezone the Riverside property because it adheres to the city's comprehensive plan, the Framework for the Future. The document calls for continued use of all the Riverside property - including the soccer field - for hospital purposes.

"If we don't rezone, it would be a nonconforming use and we usually only do that when it's a use we want to change," said Sheila McAllister, the city's planning services manager. "We're recommending that that use remain the hospital. We don't want to change what's there now. We don't want to make it a park. And the corner is part of the hospital's complex."

McAllister acknowledged that the proposal would give the hospital a great deal of latitude in developing the property. "I would hate to think that they would build something not related to the hospital," she said.